


The Try Guys Try Not To Die Together

by whetherwoman



Category: Buzzfeed: The Try Guys
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 20:50:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5470382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whetherwoman/pseuds/whetherwoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first thing Eugene thought when he opened his eyes was, <em>I have never had a hangover this bad.</em></p><p>The second was, <em>Keith looks worried. Keith is never worried.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Try Guys Try Not To Die Together

**Author's Note:**

  * For [formerlydf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/formerlydf/gifts).



> Could maybe be pre-slash if you squinted really hard.
> 
> Thank you so much to dancinbutterfly for the beta. Any remaining mistakes are mine alone.

The first thing Eugene thought when he opened his eyes was, _I have never had a hangover this bad._

The second was, _Keith looks worried. Keith is never worried._

Keith did look worried. Also blurry. Eugene squinted and tried to rub his eyes, but when he started to move his arm, it sent a shooting pain down his side.

Which was why the first thing he _said_ was, “Motherfucker.”

“Gonna have to bleep that one out,” Keith said, but his attempt at a smile was pretty weak. “Glad to see you’re awake, though.”

“Fresh as a fucking daisy,” Eugene muttered, moving his hand to his head more carefully. “What did I—”

That was when his memory kicked in, flash of image after image. The road trip. The rainstorm. The malfunctioning GPS. The car crash.

“Shit,” Eugene said, sitting up far too fast. “Ned, Zach, where are—”

“They’re fine,” Keith said, scrambling to put an arm behind Eugene, supporting him awkwardly. “They’re fine, they’re trying to get back up to the road, flag down a truck or something. You’re the only one who—I mean, no one else got hurt. A couple scrapes. I got a big bruise on my knee.” 

He reached over tentatively to touch Eugene’s forehead. Eugene flinched without meaning to, then swore as more pain rolled over him.

“You’ve got a, uh—right here,” Keith said unhappily, touching Eugene’s head delicately. “I think you should let me clean it off. Like, now.” 

“Yeah,” Eugene said, swallowing bile. He had a feeling he was better off not knowing exactly why his head hurt so bad. “Yeah, go for it, I’ll hold still. Uh, maybe I should lie down again.”

“Yeah, good, let me—” Keith said, carefully maneuvering the two of them around until Eugene could rest his head on Keith’s leg. “There was a big first aid kit in the back of the car. Good planning, right?” He tried to smile again, but turned away to ruffle through the kit. He pulled out a package of wet wipes and a big bottle of ibuprofen, which he rattled enticingly.

Eugene managed a smile and swallowed two pills dry, then closed his eyes and tried to focus on his breath as Keith dabbed at his forehead. Breath in through the nose, smell of antiseptic and pine, breath out, rough texture of the dirt under his hands. Then the sound of snapping twigs, footsteps, Ned and Zach. _It says something about my relationship with my coworkers_ , Eugene thought woozily, _that it probably doesn’t strike them as even a little odd to see me basically lying in Keith’s lap_.

“Is he awake?” Zach, quiet and stressed.

“Yeah, he was.” Keith. “He might have passed out again, though, I don’t think he’s doing too good. It’s going to be tough to get him up to the road.” 

“Yeah, about that…” Ned, deeply unhappy. “We can’t. There’s no way up.”

“What?” Keith, too loud. 

“There’s no way up,” Zach said, then cleared his throat. His voice was shaking. “There’s no way back to the road. It’s hundreds of feet straight up. You can’t even see the cars going by, we could hear trucks but couldn’t see them. We can’t… Shit.” 

Nobody said anything for a minute. Or maybe Eugene passed out again. Keith seemed to have finished cleaning off his forehead, but Eugene could still feel his hand on his head, warm and dry. 

Zach said, “We have to go down.”

Nobody said anything.

“We have to go down,” Zach said again. “Nobody’s going to see us from the road. No cell phone signal. Nobody’s ever going to—we have to go find another road. Or something. We just—we can’t stay here.”

“Right,” Keith said quietly. “Yeah. Yeah, we’ll go… find somebody downhill. We’ll hike out of here.”

Eugene kept his eyes closed and felt himself drift.

* * *

He wasn’t out for too long. It was still light when he opened his eyes again, although the heavy cloud cover left over from the storm earlier meant he couldn’t tell just how long had passed. He turned his head carefully from side to side, testing. His head seemed to feel better, although there was still something wrong in his left shoulder that sent sickening waves of nausea over him when he tried to move it. His head was resting on something lumpy now, maybe Keith’s jacket.

Moving slowly and breathing through his nose, he managed to sit up without too much trouble. He was about twenty feet away from the car. Eugene swallowed heavily at his first look at it, smoking and crumpled. It was a miracle they’d all gotten out with as few injuries as they did. The windshield was smashed, the entire hood was crushed, and the door on the passenger side where Eugene had been sitting was dangling by one hinge. Eugene wondered briefly how the guys had gotten him out of the car, then quickly decided not to think too hard about it.

Keith, Zach and Ned were gathered around the open trunk of the car, which seemed to be less damaged than the front. They’d clearly been working for a while, with most of their possessions out on the ground and divided up into several piles.

Ned looked up and saw Eugene. “Hey, he’s awake!” he said, and the other two guys looked up as well.

Eugene cleared his throat. “Hey,” he said, surprised at how normal he sounded. 

“Feeling better?” Ned said, walking over and frowning at Eugene’s forehead, where Keith had been trying to bandage him up before.

“Yeah, I think so,” Eugene said, gingerly reaching up and touching his forehead. It throbbed, but felt crusted over, not wet. “Something’s screwed up in my shoulder, I think—help me up?”

With Ned’s support, Eugene was able to get to his feet. “Score, didn’t pass out,” he said, trying to smile. Based on Ned’s attempt at a smile back, though, he guessed he hadn’t done too well.

“We’re sorting out what we can take with us,” Keith said as they walked over to the car, gesturing at the much smaller of the two piles next to the car. “And, uh, learning about how vastly over-prepared some of us were.”

“Or exactly the right amount prepared!” Zach said, chipper. “This is going to be the most comfortable stranded emergency death hike ever.”

They certainly had options. The large first aid kit Eugene had seen earlier included antibiotic ointment, bandaids of all shapes and sizes (and superhero patterns), gauze in sterile packaging, antifungal cream, a giant bottle of 50 SPF sunscreen, several small foam splints, antihistamine pills, several types of over-the-counter painkillers and one bottle that looked not so over-the-counter, super weird scissors with angles and random pointy bits all over, an empty 30mm syringe, and a stethoscope. The pile also included five space blankets, three tarps, two large bundles of parachute twine, both a Swiss army knife and a scary-looking hunting knife, half a dozen water-cleaning straws, and a really giant flashlight.

“Really?” Eugene said, nudging one of the the tarps with his foot. 

“I totally, totally didn’t bring any of this,” Keith said.

“That wilderness survival video we did made an impression on me,” Zach said defensively.

Ned nodded vigorously. “I needed the space blankets anyway, I was going to go camping with my wife later this summer.”

“I can’t believe you two didn’t bring anything useful,” Zach said.

“In my defense, I didn’t think GPS would malfunction, we’d crash the car, and need to be prepared for forming a new colony in the woods,” Eugene said dryly.

“Um,” Keith said. “I did bring this.” He reached into the back seat and pulled out four bags of Wild Bill’s Bacon Jerky. After a second of silence, he reached into the car again and pulled out a dozen protein bars. Still, no one said anything, and Keith heaved a sigh and pulled an entire bag of marshmallows out of his pocket.

“Those were in your pocket?” Eugene said faintly.

“I have big pockets, okay,” Keith said.

“Okay, so, great, we’re set,” Zach said. “We’ve all got backpacks, we’ll divide all this up, and head… uh. Down, I guess? Which way is north?”

“No one brought a compass? No one brought a compass. How did no one bring a compass?” Keith said.

“There was one on my phone,” Ned said. “The phone that was already nonfunctional and now is actually smashed into little bits and pieces.”

“I can’t read them anyway,” Zach said.

“We are both the most over-prepared and underprepared survivalists ever,” Eugene said.

“Trying not to die alone made a big impact on me, okay?” Zach said. “Being prepared is pretty much all I’ve got.”

“We’re not dying alone,” Keith said firmly. “Nobody is alone, okay? We’re doing this together this time.”

“Uh, how about not dying at all?” Eugene said.

“I’m with him,” Ned said, raising his hand. “I’m going home to my wife. Fuck, she must be worried by now… I’ve missed our daily phone call, she’s probably freaking out.” He blinked hard and swallowed. “Fuck,” he said again, his voice choked and wobbly.

Eugene looked at the ground. Ned’s roller coaster feelings were awkward in the best of circumstances, which this definitely was not. And as usual, Eugene had no idea how to respond.

“Hey, man,” Keith said, moving past Eugene to wrap Ned up in a big hug. “We’ll be back before you know it, this is just going to be some crazy story you can tell her. We’re going to do this, you know we are.”

“Yeah,” Ned said, and sniffed. “Yeah, okay.”

Eugene shifted from foot to foot, half glad Keith always handled this kind of thing, and half jealous—why did Keith always know what to say and how to act? It was the one thing Eugene wasn’t the best at. Besides babies.

But then he felt Zach come up next to him, not touching, just standing close enough that Eugene could feel his warmth on his arm. He didn’t say anything or even look at Eugene, but Eugene felt better. They were in this together, after all.

“Right,” he said. “If we’re done with the crying part, let’s pack this shit up already.”

* * *

To Eugene’s chagrin, he couldn't carry a pack at all. Even trying to put the strap over his shoulder was dizzyingly overwhelming. 

“I think you've got a broken collarbone, man,” Ned said. “I had that once, I felt like shit for weeks. You're nauseous, right? And it hurts to move your arm like this?”

“Fuck, yes, ouch,” Eugene said, trying to pull away. “Stop it.”

“So what do we do?” Zach asked, fidgeting from foot to foot. In addition to the big pack on his back he had a fanny pack on each hip, one strapped over the other. “Do we, like, splint it or something?”

“You can’t really do much,” Ned said, still poking at Eugene’s shoulder. “We could put his arm in a sling, just so it doesn’t move around as much.”

“Anything to stop you poking me,” Eugene said. “Seriously, stop it.”

“Right, sorry,” Ned said, stepping back. He didn’t look very sorry, though, Eugene thought. Eugene was not feeling disposed to be kind. His shoulder hurt like a bitch.

“We could use… uh…” Keith said, rummaging through the pile they weren’t taking. “Do we just need, like, some cloth or something?”

In spite of none of them having a clue what they were doing, they managed to tie Eugene’s arm to his side with a minimum of swearing. Ned bitched about having one of his favorite shirts ripped for the cause, but it served him right so whatever.

Eventually they were ready. Keith took the lead, bushwhacking as straight downhill as he could go. Eugene followed, then Zach, then Ned. Eugene quickly found that it was all he could do to simply focus on where he put his feet. Keith was pushing most of the undergrowth out of the way, but the ground was rocky and uneven. Even without a pack, he had no energy or breath to look around or do anything other than keep from falling on his ass.

So it was a complete surprise when he found himself stumbling on to level ground.

They were in a canyon, what must have once been a river bed. The slope on the other side was as steep and overgrown as the one they had just stumbled down, but in between was all pebbles and sand.

“Oh thank god,” Zach said, stumbling down behind him. “That was hell. Can we take a break?”

“Yes, please,” Eugene said gratefully, for once in his life not in the least ashamed of needing a break. His head and shoulder were both throbbing.

They sat on the sandy ground and Keith broke out the jerky and marshmallows. They were all out of breath and didn’t talk much, but with bits of sunlight breaking through the cloud cover it almost felt like they were just out on a fun hike.

Of course, Ned was the first one to pop up. “Right!” he said, stretching his arms up until his back popped, then doing a couple lunges for good measure. “So this is just going to go downhill til it gets to a bigger river and there will definitely be people there. With phones. And medical care. And phones.”

“Ugh,” Keith said, but picked himself up. “You guys okay?”

“Yeah,” Zach said with a sigh. He nudged his pack on the ground next to him with a sour expression, then picked it up and slung it back on his back. 

“You doing all right, Eugene?” Keith asked him directly.  
“Yeah,” Eugene said absently. Keith still looked worried, just as worried as he’d looked when Eugene first woke up after the car crash. It was just… weird, that’s all, that’s why it was hitting Eugene so hard. “Uh, yeah, no, I’m good.”

Apparently that wasn’t particularly reassuring, because Keith immediately came over to him. “Are you feeling dizzy or anything? Because if you have a concussion we should… actually, I don’t know what we would do.”

“How do his eyes look?” Zach said, coming over too. “Isn’t that supposed to be what you look at for a concussion?”

“Yeah, if the pupils are different sizes,” Ned said, leaning over Zach’s shoulder. With all three guys staring at his eyes, Eugene felt weird.

“Pretty sure I’m good,” he said. “Gimme a hand up? I just want to get back to civilization and actual medical care.”

“I’m hurt,” Keith said, as Zach and Ned gently pulled Eugene up. “My wet wipes and Batman bandaids aren’t good enough for you?” But the wrinkle in his forehead had eased up, so Eugene didn’t mind.

* * *

The level ground was definitely easier to walk on, but Eugene could still feel himself getting tired faster than normal. His head ached with a constant dull throb, and the pain in his shoulder seemed to radiate down the side of his body with each step.

“Hey, hold up a second,” Ned said suddenly from behind him.

“What is it?” Keith said, turning around.

“Do you hear that?” Ned said.

Eugene listened, but didn’t hear anything. A breeze, maybe?

“I don’t—” Keith started.

“No, wait,” Zach interrupted. “It sounds like rain or something, right? Is it going to rain again?”

Eugene looked up at the sky, squinting even though it was still overcast, but looked down when Keith suddenly swore.

“No, it’s that,” Keith said, pointing back uphill.

Eugene didn’t see anything at first, but then, back around a bend in the river bed, a flash of motion. An animal? No, it was water, just trickle, flowing down the middle of the dry creek.

“That’s weird,” Zach said. 

“Right?” Ned said. “It hasn’t rained in hours. It’s kind of loud, though.”

It was, and getting louder. And closer. The trickle of water was turning into a muddy, burbling stream. And was that a branch floating around the bend?

“Uh, maybe let’s go uphill or something,” Eugene suggested.

They scrambled up the slope a few feet. Eugene looked behind him and was shocked to see that water had already reached the spot they’d been standing a minute before. It was getting deeper, too, and louder. He put his head down and scrambled up as fast as he could with only one arm.

Soon, though, they reached a straight rock face, almost six feet high. Eugene risked a glance behind again. The water was dark and frothing, carrying along whole bushes and large branches. The flow seemed to increase every second, now barely a few inches behind his heels.

“Okay. Okay,” Keith said, and took his backpack off. He jumped and caught the top of the boulder in front of him by his fingertips. His feet dangled until he gasped, “Gimme a boost?” After one puzzled second, Zach and Ned stepped in and hoisted him up until he could scramble to the top. He disappeared for a split second, then his head popped back over the side.

“Come on, come on, throw them up here!” he said.

Eugene got out of the way, feeling worse than useless, as Zach and Ned passed first Keith’s backpack, then their own up to Keith. Without wasting any more breath on words Ned hoisted Zach as high as he could, and Keith grabbed Zach’s arms and pulled him up. Then they both leaned over and held their hands out for Eugene.

Eugene looked helplessly at Ned, but Ned had already braced himself and was gesturing impatiently for Eugene to climb up. After one agonizing second of hesitation, Eugene gave in and hoisted himself between Ned and the rock, until he got high enough that Zach and Keith could grab his good arm and haul him all the way up.

Even the strain on his good arm hurt like a bitch, though, and he ended up flat on his back on the top of the boulder as the world spun nauseatingly around him. When he was finally able to sit up, Keith’s torso was half off the boulder, reaching for Ned, and Zach was holding his ankles and straining to pull them both up.

As Eugene watched, Zach slipped, and Keith skidded forward another inch. Before he could think, Eugene was hurling himself at Keith’s legs. His arm shrieked in pain but he gritted his teeth and held on. Zach adjusted his grip on Keith's legs and pulled, until Keith and Ned were both back up on the rock.

Eugene fell back, gasping. He found his eyes fixing on Ned’s sneakers. They were covered in mud, soaked through up to his ankles.

"Fuck, that was scary," Ned said, voice shaking. "Uh, thanks."

"Oh, no problem," Keith said, out of breath. "Any time, no big deal."

Eugene wanted to say something too. Like, thanks for saving my life, thanks for almost sacrificing yourself for me. He peered over the side of the boulder. The water completely covered the slope where they'd been standing a minute before. It was fast, banging debris against the side of their boulder with enough force to splash water up the side. His throat felt swollen shut, unable to get anything out.

They stayed on top of the boulder for what felt like hours. The water receded slowly but surely, and when it was down to mud they hauled themselves and their packs off and kept walking. Within another hour, the creek bed was completely dry again, as if the flood had never happened.

* * *

In the end, it was oddly anticlimactic. The creek bed dumped them out next to a trailhead, a real trailhead with signs and a parking lot and some very nice hikers who called the very nice Park Rangers who took them to a very nice hospital where Eugene got some very, very nice drugs.

When he opened his eyes again, his first thought was, _Keith looks worried. Keith never looks worried._

But when he tried to sit up, Keith immediately leaned over to press him back down. “It’s okay, man,” he said. “Everything’s fine. Don’t sit up, you’ll pull out your IV.”

Eugene did actually have an IV. He could hear quiet beeps, footsteps, and distant voices from beyond the curtain around his bed, but everything seemed calm.

“Zach and Ned, are they—”

“Yeah, they’re both fine,” Keith said, although the worry lines in his forehead didn’t ease. “Ned got some seriously nasty blisters from walking in wet shoes, they had to pull one of his toenails off, it was completely gross.”

“Ew, you didn’t need to tell me that,” Eugene complained, although he knew he would have kept asking until he found out exactly how the other guys were.

Keith cracked a smile. “Anyway, Zach’s staying with him, so I got Eugene-sitting duty. Your collarbone’s fractured and you had to get a couple stitches on your head, but they’re talking about discharging you pretty quick. We should all be on our way home really soon.”

“That’s great,” Eugene said. “So what are you not telling me?”

“Nothing,” Keith said guiltily.

“Like hell,” Eugene said, feeling anxiety rise in his chest. “You’re a shitty liar. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong!” Keith protested. “It’s just that… well…” He hesitated one more second, then abruptly turned to the bedside table and grabbed a small mirror off of it, and held it up for Eugene to see. 

Eugene stared at his own reflection in the glass, then buried his face in his hands.

“It’s gonna be okay, man,” Keith said anxiously. “They had to do it, you know, for the stitches, we asked them if they could maybe not but they said—”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Eugene lifted his head, gasping with laughter. “We made it through a car crash and a flash flood and a death hike and you think I’d freak out that they shaved my hair?”

Keith smiled uncertainly, then started giggling along with Eugene. “Well, when you put it that way…”

Eugene couldn’t stop laughing, gasping for breath, until to his shock he realized he was crying. Tears were coursing down his face, his shoulders shaking, until Keith reached over and pulled him into a hug.

“Oh, geez, Eugene,” Keith murmured in his ear. “It’s okay, we made it. We did it. It’s all gonna be okay now.”

For once in his life, Eugene hugged back fiercely. He let himself cry like he hadn’t cried since he was a kid, like he hadn’t cried any time he could remember. He cried for all the fear he hadn’t been able think about, for all the pain he’d tried to ignore, for his fucking hair, for the friendships and love he was so lucky to have and who deserved so much more from him. Keith just held him, warm and solid, until eventually Eugene found he could stop crying.

Eugene lifted his head from Keith’s shoulder and wiped his eyes self-consciously. But Keith just grinned at him, his normal big, stupid, goofy grin. He didn’t look worried at all.

Everything was going to be fine.


End file.
